This volume was the Swarthmore Lecture for 1932, one of an annual series of lectures delivered by and for members of the Society of Friends (Quakers). The lecture discusses the place of education and moral philosophy in the world of the early twentieth century, as well as the place of religious discipline in education.

This book discusses the very nature and purpose of education and provides a foundation upon which more specialized studies in the psychology, history and sociology of education can be based. The book therefore surveys the main problems of human life – the relation of the individual and society, freedom and authority, continuity and change (i.e.growth), and underlying them all, the paradox that aspiration and frustration are continually linked in human experience. The educational implications of these various problems are considered in such a way that the methods as well as the aims of education are discussed.

This introduction to Plato’s philosophical and educational thought examines Plato’s views and relates them to issues and questions that occupy philosophers of education. Robin Barrow stresses the relevance of Plato today, while introducing the student both to Plato’s philosophy and to contemporary educational debate. In the first part of the book the author examines Plato’s historical background and summarizes the Republic. Successive chapters are concerned with the critical discussion of specific educational issues. He deals with questions relating to the impartial distribution of education, taking as a starting point Plato’s celebrated dictum that unequals should be treated unequally. He examines certain methodological concepts such as ‘discovery-learning’ and ‘play’ and also raises the wider question of children’s freedom. He looks critically at the content of the curriculum and discusses Plato’s theory of knowledge and attitude to art. Finally Robin Barrow discusses Plato’s view of moral education and the related problem of what constitutes moral indoctrination

This was the last and most important and comprehensive work of Charlotte Mason, (founder of the Parents’ National Educational Union). For more than half a century the practical results of her original thought on education could be seen in all parts of the world in the Charlotte Mason Method and the Parents’ Union Schools.

When originally published this was the first book to offer a collective history of all the arts – Art, Drama, Dance, Music, Literature and Film – in the curriculum. It also offers a coherent framework for the teaching of arts which is in line with the best current trends since the Gulbenkian Report of 1982. It insists that the arts, seen together should be an essential part of the national curriculum.

Intended primarily for education students this book provides an introduction to the philosophy of education that tackles educational problems and at the same time relates them to the mainstream of philosophical analysis. Among the educational topics the book discusses are the aims of education, the two cultures debate, moral education, equality as an ideal and academic elitism. It examines the limitations of a purely technological education, and suggests the shape of a balanced curriculum. It critically analyses important educational theses in the work of Rousseau, Dewey, R S Peters, P H Hirst, F R Leavis, Ronald Dworkin and G H Bantock, among many others, and considers the philosophical copics of relativism, the nature of knowledge, the basis of moral choice, the value of democracy and the status of religious claims.

This collection of essays describes Froebel’s life and the history of his influence on the education of young children in Britain. It also traces the religious roots of his philosophy and discusses his psychological and educational principles in the light of developments in these fields since his day.

Written before, but published after The First World War, this volume’s plea for a national system of education which will produce a nation of prosperous, morally fulfilled people able to live at peace with other nations is doubly poignant given the sacrifice of the ‘lost generation’. However, the author also sees the horror of the War as an opportunity to change human destiny through education, an opportunity to abandon the narrow system of education in favour of one which will ‘bring education in touch with life’ and provide Britain with the intellectual and moral efficiency necessary to steer her through the following turbulent years of the twentieth century. Covering the core subjects of the English school curriculum in the early twentieth century the chapters in The Modern Teacher, if somewhat utopian, describe best practice in teaching of the particular subject and suggest possible improvements. One chapter also discusses the importance of the relatively new subject of citizenship, as well as the moral education of pupils.

This volume reaffirms the indispensable place of the arts in any coherent curriculum. The author hopes that the specific arguments formulated in the book will advance the conservationist post-Modernist aesthetic.

There are many students who find philosophy of education difficult, because they have never received teaching in the basic essentials of general philosophy. This book begins by asking the basic question ‘what is philosophy?’ and examines a number of possible answers. Step by step the reader is introduced to the modern techniques of linguistic and concept analysis. Whenever a technical term is used it is explained and illustrated by reference to familiar situations in everyday life.